Kathryn Vercillo of the Crochet Concupiscence blog has published Crochet Saved My Life: The Mental and Physical Benefits of Crochet , a book about the potential of crochet to heal, interwoven with stories from crocheters (including yours truly). Kathryn has done a tremendous amount of research, and has compiled quite a list of resources. If you are interested in how crochet, specifically, can contribute to mental and physical health, this is the book for you!

As I said in the interview I did with Kathryn, one of the struggles I had with depression after I graduated from college was not having health insurance. While there are professional resources available to the uninsured, I learned that the system cannot support the full demand. If I had been a drug addict, I may have been able to find a professional therapist with sliding scale fees. As it was, I wound up cobbling together a plan for myself that included crochet as well as diet, exercise, and applying good moderating skills to my thought processes (particularly how to deal with “trolls”). Crochet can be an excellent way to do things for others, get involved with positive social groups, and meditate. If you have medical care available to you, please go and talk to a medical professional first; if you do not have that option, you are not alone. Chandelle of the Chicken Tender blog recently posted on this topic (basket-weaving for mental health), and lists two books that I picked up and started reading after reading her post. The Depression Cure by Stephen Ilardi and Undoing Depression by Richard O’Connor lay out plans that you could use to tailor a program for yourself; combined with Crochet Saved My Life, you may be able to build your own personalized therapy program for depression with crochet as a serious and significant component. Again, if medical care is available to you, take it.

Contrary to popular belief, depression is not a pervasive feeling of sadness, but rather a pervasive feeling of nothing. As Richard O’Connor explains in Undoing Depression, the opposite of depression is not happiness, but vitality. Being depressed is like having a heavy wool blanket tossed over your emotional life. This is especially negative for people who “live in their heads,” like me. We don’t have normative feelings for balance as our cognitive life becomes distorted. - - Chandelle

Contributing to Crochet Saved My Life was an easy choice; choosing to be identified in the book was a harder choice. Over the years, I’ve chosen to keep my personal life separate from my business life; in this case, I felt that it was more important for readers of this book (who are likely a part of the crochet community) to know that these stories are true, and to know that people in their community have been able to successfully deal with these issues. Crochet Saved My Life is a book I would have loved to have had on my bookshelf years ago; I’m glad it’s on my (digital) bookshelf now.